Turing Tumble

I got this for Christmas.

It's a game & it's also a mechanical computer driven by marbles. Invented by Prof. Paul Boswell, who used to teach at the University of Minnesota,.

Rather than use electronic components like most modern computers, this uses gears and levers.
It should be a fun way to teach basic programming which I can hopefully (somehow) apply to synths.

Computers in general can be either analog or digital.
This distinction also applies to mechanical computers.
They have been around for ages.

 Below is  the famous Antikythera mechanism.
It's an ancient Greek mechanical computer used to predict astronomical positions 

 They are analog when they use smooth mechanisms such as curved plates or slide rules for computations. They are digital when they use gears.

The Turing Tumble uses gears and is apparently "Turing Complete". This means it can do anything a computer can do - or at least it could if the board were big enough.



..
Basically, a Turing machine is a "finite state machine" with the ability to read and write data to a "tape".
It can also stop or halt – it may not sound important, but this ability attracts a great deal of attention.

Links
+ What is a Turing Machine
+ tURING Machines explained visually
+ Stanford Uni
+ Turing Tumble VR
+ Dr Nim
+ Hackerday
+ Digi-Comp 1
+ Nim